Spain can spark

FOOTBALL is coming home to the Low Countries but the degree of difficulty could not be higher than it will be for three weeks and a day, starting here with Belgium versus Sweden tonight.

It gets bigger than this, with every World Cup, but this is as tough as it gets whenever and wherever the beautiful game is played for a glittering prize and a crock of gold. It takes fewer matches to win the European Championship but there is not an easy game among them.

No Brazil or Argentina in these Finals but no comparatively soft touches from football's emergent continents, either.

While the samba drummers and tango dancers of Latin America might stop the Europeans winning the World Cup in the end, there is always the chance of a decent run for any half-decent team's money.

The instant danger for every manager here is getting knocked out in the first round and sacked while staggering on to the first bus home. By World Cup standards, every group in Euro 2000 is a so-called Group of Death.

The official distinction of that soubriquet has been attached by concensus to Group D (for death, naturally) since it comprises France, the reigning world champions, Holland, the mightier of the co-hosts, Denmark, the recent European champions, and the Czech Republic, who were stylish runners-up to Germany in Euro 96.

All four of them are somebody's favourites. But every group is bristling with potential winners.

Slovenia are supposed to be the no-hopers yet they came through the playoffs by overthrowing Ukraine, Shevchenko, Rebrov et al.

Kevin Keegan has lodged England's counter claim for a group of death certificate -'we're in the toughest section' - and not without due cause since captain Alan Shearer and his troops are required to pick their way through the m i n e f i e l d o f Po r t u g a l , Germany and Romania.

None of which makes it any easier to peer into the old crystal ball and foretell whose hands will be reaching up to collect that silver cup in Rotterdam on the evening of July 2.

But at least the lads have travelled buoyed by the knowledge that the steel of their challenge has been forged in the finest League in the world.

Unfortunately, not the English lads, not Sheffield steel and not the Premiership. If ever it is to be Spain's year for a major championship - and heaven knows they should have had more than the one European victory they claimed in 1964 - it is this first year of the third millennium.

No nation has made a richer contribution to the history and fabric of the global game without the reward of a world title.

To be sure, in large measure, they have been the authors of their own undoing. Time and again they have journeyed to these football summits with a team packed with players of the highest quality, only to fall over their own feet.

Worst of all, they choked on their home World Cup in 1982, which was also the Year of Keegan's Injured Back.

But in its cyclical belief that opportunity always comes round again, the Spanish game has worked cleverly and hard through the intervening seasons to nourish another glorious flowering of natural talent. To make that possible, it has gone back to its roots in the club game.

Real Madrid, the masters of the European Cup in all its original majesty, have led the Spanish renaissance but they are not alone. While the club of Kings now reigns supreme over the Champions League, their opponents in the final were countrymen of Valencia.

And Barcelona had made it three Spanish clubs out of four in the semifinals.

The best Liga in the world?

Difficult to deny when you consider that all of those finished beneath Deportivo la Coruna in their domestic championship just ended, that Real Zaragoza split the giants in the top five and that in the estimation of many connoisseurs Celta Vigo play the most progressive football in Europe.

As for strength in depth the Spanish league bats all the way down to No.10 or 11, which is more than can be said for the Premiership. So far, it is Spain's year beyond doubt. Whether it will continue to be so in Belgium and Holland depends on how much that volatile temperament overheats in the pressure-cooker.

Harnessing native brilliance to the patriotic cause has never been Spain's speciality, not least because of that chronic fear of failure. Backing their ability as I for one did in the 1994 World Cup - has been a monotonously hazardous enterprise. And yet, and yet . . . There is a different feel to them this time, a sense that the Spanish mentality is less fragile now, more focused.

The relaxed chatter of several of them on Madrid's hot night in Paris gave off changed vibes.

After being the great underachievers for half a century it is as if they have come to realise they have nothing left to lose, if only because their people no longer expect them to win.

If so, that sets them apart from so many of the stressed-out contenders, England included, who know only too well the vitriolic nature of the reception which awaits them if they fail to fulfil all those nationalistic ambitions.

The competition will be ferocious, with France, having added genuine goalscorers to Zinedine Zidane's world champions of creative football, and Holland, with their total self-belief and home advantage, my joint second favourites. As ever, Germany, Italy and England will be the teams to beat.

Portugal, who are likely to deliver the player of the tournament in Luis Figo, are a danger to anyone and will be lying in wait for Keegan in Eindhoven on Monday. Romania, if Gheorghe Hagi is of sound body and stable mind to inspire them, can be the dark horses with Sweden a fair bet.

As for Spain, much depends on the fitness of young Raul to conjure the goals and the staying power of old Fernando Hierro to command the defence.

If those pillars of Iberia hold firm, we are on the eve of not so much a beerfest as a fiesta.